Families rebut claims victims, aged 16 to 22, were militants while ex-chief minister calls for investigation Mon 4 Jan 2021 05.00 GMT Ghulam Mohammad Lone, father of Zubair Ahmad, 22, who was killed by the Indian army. Photograph: Kamran Yousuf Surrounded by mourners who gathered in his garden, Mushtaq Ahmad Wani fell to his knees with a grief-ridden scream. “They killed my only son and buried him far away in the mountains,” he cried out. Wani, a 42-year-old fruit merchant living in Below, a small village near Pulwama in the Indian region of Kashmir, had been driving home on Wednesday when he received a message from the police, requesting a photograph of his 16-year-old son, Athar Mushtaq. Mushtaq, a student, had left home the previous afternoon. By the time Wani reached home, he was given the news that made his heart shatter. Mushtaq was dead, killed by the Indian army on Tuesday night. They claimed he was one of three militants who were part of Kashmir’s long-running insurgency and who were planning an attack on the region’s main city of Srinagar. But Wani was confused and angry. His was certain his son was no militant. “He had called his sister and told her that he had gone to [nearby] Pulwama town and would return by the evening or stay for the night at a friend’s place,” said Wani. “He told her his phone might get switched off because of low battery.” Wani was not alone. The parents of the other two killed in the same purported gunfight have also disputed the army’s version of events and claimed that their sons, Aijaz Maqbool Ganai, 20, and Zubair Ahmad Lone, 22, were not militants at all. All three families of Mushtaq, Ganai and Lone are claiming they were innocent, killed by the Indian army in a staged encounter and their deaths passed off as a successful anti-militancy operation. The military has a history of grave human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in Kashmir and news of the deaths prompted mass protests across the region. Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Kashmir, has called for an investigation into the deaths. The Indian region of Kashmir has been home to a long-running dispute between India and Pakistan and insurgents have been fighting Indian rule since the early 1990s. Thousands, including civilians and militants, have been killed in the violence, and Indian army officers are often given rewards for the capture and killing of militants, either in financial pay-offs or promotions. The incident comes days after a rare police investigation where an Indian army officer was indicted for the extrajudicial killing of three Kashmiri labourers in a staged gunfight in July 2020. The officer was found to have shot the civilians, placed weapons on their dead bodies before “stripping them of their identities and tagging them as hardcore terrorists”. It is unusual for the families of known militants to profess their innocence. Locals who join the insurgency in Kashmir usually announce their recruitment into militant ranks on social media, often accompanied by a picture of them clutching a gun, but none of the three had done this. Those who join without such announcements are still usually listed by the police and the army, and their details, including pictures, are kept on record. However, local police admitted the three “were not mentioned in our list of terrorists” and had no previous arrests. Nevertheless, the police and military maintain they were “hardcore associates of terrorists”. Mohammad Maqbool Ganai shows a picture of his son, Aijaz Maqbool. Photograph: Kamran Yousuf The families said neither they nor their sons had ever been arrested and government forces had never raided their residences, which is commonplace for families of known rebels or their suspected associates. Ganai, who was a close friend of Mushtaq, had reportedly spent the past month studying at home. He had been advised by a doctor to take bed rest because of prolapsed disc in his back and so had not left home for the past 35 days, according to his father, Mohammad Maqbool. Ganai had left home on Wednesday morning to submit an exam form, said Maqbool. He had later called his mother to tell her he would likely stay at his friend Mustaq’s home that evening. “How can one become a militant in two hours?” said Maqbool, who is an officer serving in the local police. Lone did not know either Mushtaq or Ganai, according to his family, and lived in a village 15km away. The distance between the homes of the three and the location of the killings is about 70km, a one-hour drive. “I believe they were picked up, made to call home forcefully and then killed,” alleged Lone’s father, Ghulam Mohammad, 63, whose other two sons are also serving in the police. The Indian army said intelligence led to them to the alleged three militants who they claimed were hiding in a house in the outskirts of Srinagar on Tuesday evening, and “lobbed grenades and fired indiscriminately” as soldiers besieged them. The following morning, the army had said they killed three militants armed with a rifle and two pistols. The police claimed the three killed were asked to surrender but they refused. But the families were keen to point out that, in contrast to what often occurs when militants are corned by Indian army officers, no family member was called down to the site to persuade the three to surrender or contacted at all. Outside police headquarters, almost 50km away from their homes, the three families gathered at the gates after hearing of the deaths, wailing and beating their chests as they demanded justice for what they believed was the murder of their sons. They pleaded with the police to hand over the bodies, which were instead taken to Sonamarg, 120km north of their homes, and buried there. The authorities in Kashmir have buried more than 100 militants in remote villages, without ascertaining their identities, citing coronavirus-related restrictions. Only a few members of each family were allowed to attend the burial. According to the few family members allowed to see the bodies, all three had bullet marks in their chest area and it seemed they were shot from a close range. The police said that they would investigate the families’ claims but public outrage has continued to grow. In a letter to Jammu and the Kashmir lieutenant governor, Manoj Sinha, Mufti said incidents of fake encounters brought “disrepute” to the armed forces and were “a grave violation” of human rights. “Questions are also looming over this encounter and there are conflicting versions and reports from police and the army,” she wrote. “Justice can be served only if it is swift and therefore I request you to initiate an impartial investigation into the matter immediately.” On Saturday, as the first snow of the year fell on Kashmir, Wani dug an icy grave in the village cemetery. If the body of his son was not returned for burial, he said, he would lie in the grave himself. See article here. © The Guardian 2021

The family of a prominent separatist leader from disputed Kashmir who is being held in an Indian jail for alleged anti-state activities has appealed to the United Nations for help in securing her release The Independent - Via AP News Wire Pakistan Jailed Kashmiri Women (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) The family of a prominent separatist leader from disputed Kashmir who is being held in an Indian jail for alleged anti-state activities appealed Monday to the United Nations for help in securing her release. Ahmad bin Qasim, the son of Aasiyeh Andrabi, who heads an Islamic women’s group in Indian-controlled Kashmir, was joined by Pakistan human rights minister Shireen Mazari in issuing the appeal during a rare news conference in Pakistan's capital Islamabad. Andrabi and two other activists, Sofi Fahmeeda and Nahida Nasreen, were charged by a court in India last month. Andrabi’s group generally campaigns against perceived acts of immorality in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. On Monday, her son — who is studying in Pakistan — and Mazari criticized Indian forces for committing human rights violations in Kashmir and asked human rights organizations to work for Andrabi's release and the release of other women jailed in India. Qasim said his mother suffers from asthma and in need of medical care. Qasim's father, Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, was a Kashmiri separatist rebel commander and Indian authorities convicted him of murder in the death of a human rights activist in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The region is split between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety. Pakistan wants India to drop charges against Andrabi and her husband and release them. Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations and have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Relations between the two countries have been further strained since August 2019, when India revoked the Muslim-majority region’s semi-autonomous status and divided it into two federally governed territories, touching off anger on both sides of the frontier. India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in its part of Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and frisking civilians. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict. See article here. © The Independent 2021

Gunmen were described as having singled out men and boys in two villages in a region under siege by militants. NIAMEY, Niger — A hundred civilians were killed in attacks by suspected militants in the West African nation of Niger on Saturday, according to government officials. Armed men shot men and boys in what was said to be a revenge attack on the villages of Tchoma Bangou and Zaroumadareye. The villages are in the southwestern region of Tillabéri, where civilians have increasingly come under attack in the past two years. “They opened fire on everybody,” said Jahafar Koudize, a resident of Tchoma Bangou who managed to escape. The attack, which came just a week after Niger’s presidential election, is one of the country’s deadliest ever. Prime Minister Brigi Rafini, in remarks broadcast Sunday on national television from a visit to the area of the assaults, put the death toll at 100 but did not say who was responsible, Reuters reported. In December 2019 and January 2020, Nigerien security forces suffered huge losses in the same region, which is also where four American Special Forces soldiers were killed alongside five of their Nigerien colleagues in 2017. No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but the militants who have recently been making inroads into Tillabéri are with the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, a franchise of the Islamic State. The entire region has become steadily more dangerous for many of those living in it. Since rebels and armed Islamists took control of cities in neighboring Mali in 2012, the terrorist threat has spread across the Sahel, a strip of land south of the Sahara. At the same time, military forces in several Sahelien countries, including Niger, have carried out grave abuses. Niger’s efforts to contain the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been unsuccessful, experts say, and security forces are increasingly pulling back from the region. Mr. Koudize, the Tchoma Bangou resident, said that he had run away with his wife and five children but that the armed men had killed as many of the village’s boys and men as they could. “We tried to defend ourselves as best we could — two of us were armed,” he said. “But when they killed those two, lots of us fled with our families.” Mr. Koudize said that on Dec. 15, three armed men had come to try to collect money from the villagers — a “tax” that they impose on communities in the area. Speaking in Zarma, he used the word “izifuto” to describe the men, a term Nigeriens translate variously as terrorist, jihadist or bandit. The villagers killed the men, Mr. Koudize said. “That’s what pushed the jihadists to come in force to take revenge on the village,” he said. Everyone in the area was fed up with the constant extortion, Mr. Koudize said. “All the villagers in the area decided to fight the terrorists, because even if the authorities send soldiers to protect us, it’s just for a couple of days,” he said. “We can’t live as prisoners anymore.” Niger held the first round of its presidential election on Dec. 27, and the vote is expected to result in the country’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power. President Mahamadou Issoufou is stepping down after serving the two terms allowed under the Constitution. The governing party candidate, Mohamed Bazoum, will face a former president, Mahamane Ousmane, in a runoff to be held in February. © The New York Times 2021

KABUL — In a video, five turbaned fighters stand in a row, wearing flak jackets and sneakers, assault rifles at the ready. One declares in Pashto that God hates those "who stray from religion" and "cling to a worldly life," and obliges the faithful to wage jihad, even if they must face prison or death, to establish the "law of the Koran" on Earth. The video, published Monday on a Taliban spokesman’s Twitter account, came amid a rash of targeted shootings and bombings in the Afghan capital that have killed several dozen journalists, civic leaders, physicians, democracy advocates and government officials. The mayhem has brought a new kind of personal terror to a city long accustomed to insurgent attacks against official buildings and military targets. Even though U.S. troops are leaving the country, the militiaman explained, “it is permissible to kill the [American] puppet regime of Kabul” and those who aid it. English subtitles accompanied his raised voice. “We are carrying weapons to avenge our values and institutions,” he said. “We are wholeheartedly obeying the supreme command of Allah.” The video was posted days before negotiations between Taliban and Afghan delegates are set to resume Wednesday in Qatar, after a two-week break. Afghan security officials have blamed the Taliban for most of the targeted killings, saying the insurgents are using new scare tactics to “leverage” their position at the negotiating table and undermine public confidence in the government of President Ashraf Ghani. The killings have led prominent civilians to take extra security measures or avoid going outdoors. The Taliban appear to be keeping close tabs on a variety of activities; a recent fashion show at a local hotel was immediately denounced in a tweet from a Taliban leader, who charged that “Western intoxication and ideas” have entered Afghan culture and warned that “anything in conflict with Islam” will be destroyed. “People in Kabul used to worry whether they would be caught by chance in an attack on a government building or international institution. Now they worry whether they will be next on the list,” said one security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The chief Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied any involvement in the attacks, calling the charges “propaganda.” In a voice-mail response Friday to questions from The Washington Post, he said the insurgent group had nothing to do with the killings and blamed them on Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. “We have not killed the doctors, civil-society activists or people who have not taken up arms against us,” he said in Dari. “They are not among our military targets, and killing them has no benefit for us.” When peace comes, he added, the country will need “educated” Afghans. Mujahid said that the group’s primary goal is to settle the issues through talks and that a “military solution” would be used only as a last resort. Despite such denials, Afghan experts and officials said they have little doubt that the Taliban is behind the surge of attacks. Most victims have been killed in their vehicles, by gunmen who escaped on motorbikes or magnetic bombs placed underneath the carriages. They said the insurgents are sending a veiled message to several audiences, including Afghan officials trying to retain public confidence, delegates returning to the peace talks and American officials in the incoming administration. The Afghan government has doubled the number of police and other security forces patrolling the capital, and vehicles are being stopped and searched on many street corners. Officials said they have made a number of arrests, and Interior Minister Massoud Andarabi told Afghan lawmakers Wednesday that detainees had described a special new “cell” based in nearby Logar province that plans attacks on high-profile individuals. “Unclaimed bombings & targeted assassination of civil society activists are . . . pillars of Talbn terror campaign linked to their negotiations strtegy,” Vice President Amrullah Saleh, a former national intelligence chief, tweeted last week. “They want to break the political will of the Afg people & demand impossible concessions.” Kabul residents going about daily routines that expose them to danger, whether selling used winter clothing in outdoor markets or delivering supplies in handcarts, are also scared. “If I didn’t have to feed my wife and children, I wouldn’t leave home at all now,” said Ali Agha, 26, who sells fruit in a crowded West Kabul neighborhood. With so many explosions and attacks, he said, he decided to move from a more profitable market to one that was safer. “I blame the president, because he can’t provide security for the people.” Many Afghans say U.S. officials gave too much away to the insurgents in the deal they signed in February, failing to commit them to specific conditions regarding violence and ties to other extremist groups while agreeing to withdraw most U.S. troops by spring. Since the pact was signed, the Taliban have waged a relentless campaign of attacks across the country, killing thousands of people. In October however, President Trump announced that troop drawdown would be speeded up, adding to the insurgents’ sense of imminent victory. “The Taliban are feeling triumphal, and they want to be seen as tough. They are not interested in winning hearts and minds,” said Davood Moradian, director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. “They are using force to delegitimize the Afghan state by showing it can’t protect the public, and to remove a layer of resistance to their victory by getting rid of those who represent the values of the Afghan republic.” With a new government soon to take over in Washington, Moradian said, the insurgents want to make sure President-elect Joe Biden does not change the terms of the February pact or set new conditions for pulling out the remaining 5,000 troops, slated to be halved next month. By sowing terror on city streets, “the Taliban are telling the new administration, ‘Don’t you dare reopen the deal,’ ” Moradian added. Among Afghan delegates returning to the Doha talks early next week, the intensifying targeted violence has created a sense of dispirited gloom. Some have lost friends to recent attacks or started wearing bulletproof vests. Others said the dismissive harshness of the Taliban’s attitude makes it hard to stay optimistic about prospects for peace — or even to remain polite in meetings with adversaries bent on killing people and creating chaos in their capital. “The Taliban have not changed,” said Abdul Hafiz Mansour, a conservative lawmaker and delegate. “They are eager for power, but they have no plans or policies, no ability to run a country. They are a fighting army, not a governing group. They know how to destroy but not to build.” “We have to keep talking because there is no other option,” he said, “but it is going to be difficult.” Mansour warned that continued violence and stalemated talks could eventually lead to a government collapse, something that has happened several times in recent Afghan history, including after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989. “The real worry is not these individual assassinations,” he said. “It is the larger wars that could lie ahead.” © The Washington Post 2020

Caroline Gaudron is the strategic support manager for MSF in Mozambique, focusing on the conflict in Cabo Delgado province. Here she describes the chaos and challenges for people trying to survive, having fled extreme violence in the province. Every day, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams see hundreds, some days thousands, of desperate yet determined people arrive by boat, by truck and by foot at Pemba, the capital of the resource-rich province Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, and other nearby towns. They have left everything behind to stay alive. They all have a terrible story to tell – a decapitated husband, a kidnapped wife, a son from whom they have no news. The insurgents attacked their village, burned down their house, took away their meagre possessions. Since the first attack on Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017, Cabo Delgado has been ravaged by fighting between the Mozambican army and a non-state armed group, Al-Shabaab. In recent months, it seems the violence and living conditions have worsened. This seemingly blessed region, with white sand beaches and turquoise water, now more resembles hell for many of its inhabitants. The daily life of the people caught in the crossfire consists of ambushes, assassinations, looting and kidnappings. Those who can, flee – a half a million people already have. But what about those who cannot leave their villages? Some have gone without electricity for months. Administration buildings, schools and health centres have been closed for even longer. A trip to farm your field means risking a bad encounter and perhaps never coming back. These people are simply trying to survive a nightmare that has lasted more than three years. Health care workers have not been spared from the violence. In May, insurgents attacked the health centre in Macomia where MSF worked. Some of our staff were sleeping at home and ran with their families into the bush. Others were working and had to flee without their families and hide. Some of our colleagues remained hidden for days and nights in the bush on the top of a hill, where they watched what was happening in Macomia below, and saw their own homes burning. It took several days for some of them to arrive in Pemba in very bad shape. We were calling all of them every day to get news, but their phones had run out of battery. After several days, we finally received the good news that they all had survived. Fleeing means leaving everything behind; taking only a few things and leaving, without knowing whether it will be possible to return one day. It also means undertaking a journey fraught with pitfalls. Most of the people who leave are women and children. Many of them walk for over 200 kilometres, their belongings on their heads, a baby hanging on their back, a little one holding their hand. They spend the nights outside. They are in hiding, fearful of being seen by a group of insurgents or of running into soldiers who may suspect them of being insurgents themselves. Both groups wear the same uniform and are nearly impossible to distinguish between. When possible, people prefer to make the journey in a chapa, or truck, crammed with others who share the same destiny, alongside packages and animals. Others choose to embark on a fishing boat that threatens to sink under the weight of its many passengers at any moment, and which does not protect them from an attack since the insurgents also move by sea, travelling from island to island. On 1 November, Cabo Delgado made international news when 40 people reportedly drowned when an overloaded boat hit rocks and sank between Ibo and Matama islands. Other boats saved 32 of the passengers. After all this suffering, the displaced people finally reach their destination to find, most of the time, total destitution and misery. If they are lucky enough to be greeted by relatives or friends, they may be given a little place in a crowded house, where they will share the modest food supplies and amenities with their generous hosts and often two or three other families. But the majority of people are not so fortunate. Thousands of people are stranded in makeshift camps. They take shelter in schools that fill up quickly and then around them, under plastic sheeting or tents crowded with several families. The sanitary facilities are insufficient, and the lack of drinking water is dramatic – the perfect conditions for a cholera outbreak. Overcrowding also increases the risk of transmission of diseases like measles and COVID-19. The rainy season recently began, and people without mosquito nets risk contracting malaria. Those with chronic diseases, like HIV, can’t get medications. These communities have neither the infrastructure nor the resources to accommodate the influx of displaced people: their fields do not produce enough food, water is scarce, local health facilities are overwhelmed. They do what they can, but tensions rise under the pressure. Local authorities have made major efforts but cannot cope with the catastrophic level of demand. Local and international non-governmental organisations are trying to deal with the most urgent needs but are far from covering the extent of the crisis. At MSF, we have launched several mobile medical teams that go to different camps and do thousands of medical consultations, while health promotion teams provide public health information. We also have teams of specialists in logistics, water and sanitation, who are building latrines in the camps and providing drinking water. It is good and important work, but it is just a drop in the bucket. There are thousands of people who we cannot reach. A tragedy is unfolding under our eyes: an incessant influx of new people with growing needs and clearly insufficient humanitarian aid to help them. The demands are just too vast, and the humanitarian workers, supplies and funding are too scarce. The obstacles to bringing in more humanitarian assistance we have so far not been able to overcome. Things will have to change and soon. After surviving unimaginable violence and a treacherous exodus, hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans now must contend with terrible diseases and hunger, and yet it feels as though their stories have been overlooked by the international community in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. I call on the international community to join MSF in recognising the urgent crisis in Cabo Deglado, and the Mozambican government to facilitate the response of international humanitarian organisations before it is too late. © MSF 2020

KABUL — Malala Maiwand sat on a television studio couch, pen and notebook in hand, a dark red headscarf framing her face. She was hosting a morning talk show in the city of Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. The topic was rising insecurity in the region, and her guest was a police spokesman. Maiwand got straight to the point. A recent killing had taken place in broad daylight and in plain sight of police, but the killer had escaped. “What is your answer to this?” she asked the man. Though just 26, Maiwand was known for holding officials to account, especially on issues of corruption, and her show on Enikass TV had become one of the most popular in the eastern part of the country. But on Dec. 10, just a few weeks after the interview aired, she was shot dead, along with her driver, when unknown gunmen fired on their vehicle as she headed to work in Jalalabad, a bustling city of some 350,000 and the capital of Nangahar province. The brazen daytime assassination was one of the latest in a string of targeted attacks on journalists in Afghanistan. The killings have highlighted the danger journalists face as they report on surging violence and tense peace talks between Afghan and Taliban representatives in Qatar that began in September. Since January, 11 Afghan journalists and media workers have been killed, making this one of the deadliest years for the country’s rapidly growing domestic media corps since the end of Taliban rule in 2001. Recently, the pace has increased, with five journalists killed in the past two months. Last Monday, Rahmatullah Nikzad, a freelance photographer, was shot dead outside his home in the city of Ghazni. In November, Elyas Dayee, a journalist who worked for Radio Azadi, and Yama Siavash, a former ToloNews anchor, were killed in separate magnetic bomb explosions, one in Helmand, the other in Kabul. Fardin Amini, an anchor for Ariana News TV, lost his life a day after Maiwand’s death. The Islamic State, an extremist group separate from the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the killings of Siavash and Maiwand. Police say Amini killed himself by slitting his throat, but his family and friends insist he was murdered. The Taliban denied involvement in the killing of Nikzad and condemned the attack on the journalist. More than a dozen Afghan journalists and media activists interviewed for this story, especially women, said they feel less safe than ever and fear that such attacks will increase as security continues to deteriorate. Maiwand was one of the few women who dared to appear openly as a television journalist in Nangahar, a deeply conservative province where few women work outside their homes. Most who work in journalism prefer to take off-camera jobs rather than risk being seen on-screen. When Enikass began operating about three years ago, Maiwand’s groundbreaking public role defied social norms. “She was a fighter for women and a brave journalist,” said Niaz Mohammad Khaksar, a colleague and reporter for Enikass. He said that her talk program covered political and social issues but that her favorite topic was women’s rights. “Her death has created fear among journalists, especially females,” Khaksar said. The assassinations have shaken the country and exposed the fragility of hard-won media freedom in Afghanistan. Dayee was among a handful of journalists who reported from Helmand, a violence-plagued province in the south. Sami Mahdi, Radio Azadi’s bureau chief, said that Dayee was an impartial journalist whose reports were precise and backed by facts, and that audiences trusted his strong, calm voice. “He always paid special attention to stories about people affected by the war,” Mahdi said. “He never forgot the human interest angle in his reporting.” Dayee’s death caused several other journalists to flee Helmand, creating an information gap in a province that has long been a critical battlefield between Taliban and government forces. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack on Dayee, but the Afghan government said it had arrested a Taliban member who admitted to carrying it out. The killings come at a time when the media community faces an uncertain future, even if the government and Taliban reach a peace deal. Tariq Arian, a spokesman for the country’s Interior Ministry, said the Taliban has been behind most targeted assassinations of journalists there since 2001. Media and human rights activists also blame the Taliban and its sympathizers for the recent killings, saying the group seeks to silence those who might weaken its position in the peace talks. The Taliban rejects such accusations. “The killing of journalists and media workers is not among our targets,” Zabiullah Mujahid, the group’s spokesman, said in a WhatsApp message to The Washington Post. The Taliban imposed harsh restrictions on the media during its five-year rule in the late 1990s. It banned television and took over state-owned radio and newspapers to use them as propaganda platforms. But the group has shown greater openness toward journalists since opening peace talks with U.S. officials in 2018. The Taliban now allows limited, heavily monitored media access to areas it controls, and its spokesmen grant interviews and issue news releases — often using technology the group once banned. In urban areas under government control, the Afghan media has thrived in the past two decades. Dozens of TV stations and hundreds of online and print outlets have been established. Afghan journalists have uncovered corruption and exposed human rights abuses with reporting that reaches millions. But those gains remain tenuous, and many journalists fear they will be reversed if the Taliban returns to power or assumes a significant role in public life. “The biggest concern is: What will be the fate of journalists and media after the peace deal?” said Shah Hussain Rasuli, the editor in chief of Salam Watandar, Afghanistan’s largest radio station. “What will be their place in the society?” When the peace talks “begin with the killing of journalists,” Rasuli added, “then the end of them does not look promising.” © The Washington Post 2020

Paramilitary police officers swap positions during a change of guard in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, in October. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) The world is finally responding to the Chinese government’s mass atrocities against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang. But now Beijing is replicating some of its worst practices — including rounding up hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military-style reeducation camps — in other parts of China. This year, Beijing built and filled massive camps in Tibet, which had been the original testing ground for cultural genocide, political indoctrination and forced labor. Tibetan leaders are pleading for the world to pay attention. “When it comes to human rights violations in China, Tibet was Patient Zero,” Lobsang Sangay, the president of the Tibetan government in exile, known as the Central Tibetan Administration, told me during a visit to Washington last week. “Xi Jinping is now reintroducing labor camps back into Tibet . . . what’s new is the speed and the scale of it and the military style that they are bringing to it.” Beijing has forced more than half a million rural Tibetans into these military-style training and indoctrination facilities in just the past six months, Sangay said. Upon their release, thousands of rural laborers are sent to perform factory work or menial jobs in other parts of China, all under the guise of “poverty alleviation,” according to a September report by the Jamestown Foundation. Corroborating documents obtained by Reuters showed that Chinese Communist Party officials were given strict quotas for how many Tibetans to round up. While Beijing has long operated gulags for political prisoners and dissidents in Tibet, these new facilities represent a huge expansion of China’s years-long program to involuntarily mass relocate rural Tibetans, which Human Rights Watch in 2013 called “unprecedented in the post-Mao era.” The goal of these camps is threefold, according to Sangay: Beijing wants to appropriate Tibetan land to commercialize its natural resources; the CCP uses the camps to forcibly assimilate Tibetans by snuffing out their culture, language and religion; and the third goal, using Tibetans as cheap forced labor, serves the first two. “ ‘Poverty alleviation’ for us means cultural assimilation,” Sangay said. “In that sense, they want to take away our faith and erase the history of Tibet.” Sangay came to Washington to support the Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which Congress passed as part of the omnibus spending bill. The legislation is meant to ensure the Biden administration doesn’t turn away from yet another Chinese government campaign of cultural genocide through forced assimilation and political indoctrination. The legislation expresses support for the idea that Tibetan Buddhists, not the CCP, should determine the identity of the 15th incarnation of the Dalai Lama after the current Dalai Lama exits this world. The fact that Beijing plans to foist on Tibetans an imposter Dalai Lama tells you everything you need to know about how it views their right to worship. Perhaps more importantly, the law updates the original Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 to call on Beijing to negotiate directly with the Tibetan government in exile based in Dharamsala, India, toward what the Dalai Lama calls the “Middle Way Approach” — a compromise to give Tibetans limited autonomy within the Chinese system. It also calls on the U.S. government (soon to be the Biden administration) to sanction CCP officials guilty of human rights violations in Tibet and establish a U.S. consulate in Lhasa, the administrative capital of Tibet. Predictably, the Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted to the legislation by demanding the United States shut up about Tibet, “lest it further harms our further cooperation and bilateral relations.” Beijing is trying to see if the Biden team will fall into the same trap President Barack Obama did in his first year. In 2009, Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett traveled to Dharamsala and told the Dalai Lama that he would not be invited to the White House in Obama’s first year. When he did eventually visit, Obama tried to please Beijing by downgrading the meeting from the Oval Office to the Map Room and ushering His Holiness out the back door, where he was photographed walking past heaps of trash. But Beijing did not reward Obama’s deference. Once Chinese leaders realized the United States was willing to downgrade the Tibet issue, they cut off talks with the Tibetan leadership and ramped up their repression campaign. President Trump never even bothered to meet with the Dalai Lama. Biden must establish early on that he won’t trade Tibetans’ futures for the false promise of smooth relations. Some of Biden’s advisers will surely tell him Tibet is just one more uncomfortable issue to be avoided in his effort to manage a complex and already rocky U.S.-China relationship. But ignoring Tibet helped embolden Beijing to expand its repression scheme to Xinjiang in the first place. That sickness is still spreading. Biden must not allow it to further metastasize. © 1996-2020 The Washington Post

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Genocide Watch has creatively adapted its work to predict, prevent, stop and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder. We have ensured the safety of our staff and our Alliance Against Genocide member organizations by developing a creative, effective virtual program. Genocide Watch staff must work virtually, rather than in person in an office. Rather than allowing the pandemic to handicap our work, Genocide Watch has thrived. Using the power of virtual communications, Genocide Watch has conducted hundreds of meetings with its twenty person staff in the US, Canada, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Our three-person Management Team is located in Northern Virginia and Montreal, Canada. Genocide Watch has actively participated in international meetings to plan projects for genocide prevention, including meetings at the National Security Council, the State Department, and with Alliance partner organizations in Washington DC, Nigeria, and Iraq. Genocide Watch’s operational methodology to maintain timely and reliable information on threats of genocide has four pillars: Staff Development, Digital Education, Virtual Communication, and the Alliance Against Genocide. Staff Development: Genocide Watch has always relied on brilliant volunteer staff members to assist Dr. Gregory Stanton in developing reports and educational resources on genocidal processes that are communicated to policy makers to warn them when preventive action is needed. These staff members do not receive monetary compensation. Student interns receive course credit for their work. Guided by his mentorship, leadership, and experience, Dr. Stanton has created a highly sought after, formative internship program that has launched many interns’ careers in genocide prevention. Genocide Watch maintains a loyalty among its former interns that lasts for years. To ensure that COVID-19 did not impede Genocide Watch’s ability to report on threats of genocides, in March 2020, Vanessa Cardenas, Deanna Wilken, and Lola Flomen three former Genocide Watch interns currently working in law, anti-human trafficking and global public health developed a virtual internship program for 2020. They recruited ten extraordinary summer interns from universities around the world. The staff includes members who hold degrees in genocide studies, conflict resolution, public health, and law, and others are students in subjects as diverse as mathematics, economics, journalism, criminology, and public policy. Utilising the interactive communications platform, Microsoft Teams, the three-person Management Team trained ten Summer Interns from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. They were joined by ten more staff members in the Fall of 2020. Genocide Watch plans to continue its virtual staff program in Spring 2020. We will sponsor virtual internships even after the COVID-19 crisis has ended. Virtual internships and volunteer staff positions make it possible for Genocide Watch to benefit from the skills of volunteer staff from around the world, including those who cannot afford to move to Washington, DC, as well as students who are still engaged in taking courses or writing masters or doctoral theses. Digital Education: Introduced by Genocide Watch’s Chief Program Officer, Deanna Wilken, Genocide Watch's Timestream Team, including Sarah Kane, Tom Shacklock, Anna Killen, Holly Scala, Eli Szydio, and Sehnaz Guven, working with the entire Genocide Watch staff, produced interactive histories of genocides on the Timestream platform. Timestream is software originally developed by the Ntrepid Corporation to provide law enforcement and government policy agencies with software to organize the histories of crimes, conflicts, and other complex social processes. Ms. Wilken recognized that Timestream is ideally suited to organize the detailed histories of conflicts that have resulted in or may lead to genocides. Genocide Watch is the first human rights organization to use this powerful software platform. Timestream is an educational tool that can be very helpful to teachers and students who are studying genocides. It is more powerful than PowerPoint because it permits one click access to supporting charts, photos, news articles, and reports that enrich the presentation of historical data. Click here to view Timestreams on Myanmar’s Genocide of the Rohingya, India’s threats to Muslims in Assam, and other histories. Co-created by interns Naveen Bhatia and Alexandra Sharp, and continued by Eli Finkelson, Genocide Watch launched a new Podcast Series: Conversations on Genocide. Genocide Watch has a Zoom licence to record the audio and video of interviews. We subscribed to SoundCloud to disseminate the podcasts to our listeners. Click here to listen to the first episode, featuring Dr. Gregory Stanton, the Founding President of Genocide Watch. Genocide Watch aims to publish a new episode once a month and will be featuring genocide experts and survivor testimonies. Led by Senior Research Director Lola Flomen, Genocide Watch's Research Team, including Eli Szydio, Nat Hill, Lauren Salim, Holly Scala, Vian Saggo, Jennifer Kirby-Mclemore, Sehnaz Guven, Giada Corsoni, and Fiona Neibart are assisting Dr. Stanton with his book for secondary schools on The Ten Stages of Genocide. Virtual Communication: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Stanton has been collaborating with key U.S. policy makers to plan U.S. government actions to assist Nigeria in stopping genocidal massacres against Christians in northeast and central Nigeria. In June, Dr. Stanton spoke at the National Security Council with former Congressman Frank Wolf, who is a member of the Genocide Watch Board of Advisors. They advocated a U.S. Special Envoy to investigate the crimes against humanity in Nigeria. Dr. Stanton also spoke at press conferences on the genocide of Christians in Nigeria organized by In Defense of Christians and by the International Campaign on Nigeria, both Alliance Against Genocide members organizations. Led by intern, Eric Ross, Genocide Watch created an interactive map of Nigeria and West Africa illustrating the increased frequency and intensity of Boko Haram, Fulani jihadist, and ISIS in West Africa attacks against Christian civilian populations. In June, Dr. Stanton’s statement on Turkey’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in northern Syria was included as evidence in the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s virtual hearing on Safeguarding Religious Freedom in Northeast Syria. To commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide, Dr. Stanton spoke about the “Cost of Denial” in a special webinar event for the Post-Conflict Research Center in Sarajevo. Intern Linda Zheng published a country report on current genocide denial in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr. Stanton spoke in virtual webinars about the cases against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court for Myanmar’s violation of the Genocide Convention against the Rohingya. Written by every member of the Genocide Watch staff, Genocide Alerts were published for Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Myanmar’s on-going genocide against the Rohingyas, the threat of genocide against Muslims in India’s Kashmir and Assam, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, Azerbaijan’s Invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, and continuing threats to Yazidis in Iraq. Genocide Watch also published early warnings about Belarus, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Mali. Developed by interns Sarah Kane and Linda Zheng, Genocide Watch sent out a monthly newsletter to subscribers with updates about its Genocide Alerts, its virtual projects, and its new educational resources. It also sent a monthly Alliance newsletter to member organizations in the Alliance Against Genocide, to key policy makers in the US, UK, Europe, and the UN, and to people who subscribe on our website. The Alliance Against Genocide: Genocide Watch has never tried to build an organizational empire. Our purpose is to be a catalyst to encourage the organization of anti-genocide organizations around the world, and to coordinate a network of those organizations, the Alliance Against Genocide. Chief Operating Officer, Vanessa Cardenas, and Alliance Coordinators Lauren Salim and Irene Soteriou expanded the Alliance Against Genocide. They created a new website, www.againstgenocide.org. The Alliance now has 80 active member organizations in 31 countries. The Alliance website will disseminate news from Alliance members through direct links to their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. With Alliance Against Genocide member, the Antiquities Coalition, Genocide Watch's Legal Team, including Dr. Stanton and Julia Sierra, filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of Bosco Ntaganda at the International Criminal Court. The Legal Team added Vian Saggo, Jennifer Kirby-Mclemore, and Giada Corsoni in December. The team is doing the research for a law review article refuting William Schabas's erroneous interpretation of intent in his defense of Myanmar in the case brought by the Gambia against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice for violation of the Genocide Convention. In November, Genocide Watch held an Alliance webinar on the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations. We also participated in webinars on Sudan, the persecution of Muslims in India, and the genocidal massacres of Christians in Nigeria. The Alliance Against Genocide is planning a virtual meeting of the leaders of all Alliance member organizations this Spring. A special note of thanks to our donors: Rather than let the COVID-19 crisis stop us, Genocide Watch has become stronger. We thank you for your generous support of Genocide Watch! We cannot do this work without you! With gratitude, Dr. Gregory H. Stanton December 26, 2020

Genocide Watch staff have published the seventh Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream covers the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghur Muslims from the Qing Dynasty through July 2020. The Chinese government is committing genocide through its policies of mass surveillance, "re-education" internment camps, forced migration, and forced mass sterilization. The international community must act to stop the genocide and seek justice for victims before it is too late. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

‘Where are they going to strike next? We don’t know.’ MAPUTO The small group of militants were dismissed as bandits and machete-wielding gangs by Mozambique's government after they began launching attacks in the country's northernmost Cabo Delgado province in October 2017. A little more than three years later, the jihadists count thousands in their ranks and end 2020 having seized towns, launched deadly cross-border raids, and displaced more than half a million people – the vast majority over the past few months. As Mozambique’s army – and its South African mercenary allies – try to hold back the insurgency, local communities in parts of the province are forming self-defence militias composed of veterans who fought here during the country’s war of independence in the 1960s and 1970s. But these groups are reportedly committing their own abuses against civilians, and the insurgents – known as Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jammah (ASWJ), and aligned with the so-called Islamic State – are launching ever more brutal attacks, particularly in areas where militia members are active. Mário Canhão Pedro, an 81-year-old man, told The New Humanitarian he fled his village of Muatide in late October during attacks that reportedly saw dozens of local residents decapitated on a football pitch – some of the worst violence in the province to date. Pedro did not witness the mass killings – which the government denies took place – because he was hiding with other residents outside Muatide. But he said a local teacher who was part of his group was beheaded after insurgents stumbled across them in the bush. “I don’t know what they want with this war,” said Pedro of the insurgents. “As an 81-year-old man, I don’t feel well being in this situation.” Humanitarian groups told TNH they are struggling to respond to the rapid escalation of violence: Funding gaps have led to fears of food ration cuts for displaced people, while access constraints and restrictions on providing aid in insurgent-controlled areas mean some are missing out on assistance. Displaced people are taking shelter across Cabo Delgado as well as in neighbouring provinces. The majority are living with host families, some of which have been hosting dozens of strangers for long periods. Others are staying in temporary camps set up recently by the government, while many are hiding out in the bush – some for weeks or months on end. The militants' long-term strategy is anyone’s guess, but as they gain ground many fear the conflict will envelop nearby provinces in northern Mozambique and could even spread to neighbouring countries. “Clearly these guys don’t seem to want to stay put,” said Paolo Israel, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. “Where are they going to strike next? We don’t know.” Mass killings Early on in the insurgency, members of ASWJ – one of a number of IS offshoots gaining ground in sub-Saharan Africa – rarely showed their faces, causing confusion among residents about who was behind the violence. Though the group still has no clear leader or manifesto, videos filmed earlier this year during attacks showed fighters posing with Islamic State flags and criticising Mozambique’s government for corruption and neglect. Research suggests the group is not new to Cabo Delgado. Some of its members are drawn from an Islamist sect – known locally as al-Shabaab or “the youth” in Arabic – that emerged in the province over a decade ago. Its message has resonated with marginalised youth unable to benefit from the coastal region’s offshore gas fields, ruby deposits, and other natural resources exploited by local elites and foreign corporations. Young men from the neighbouring provinces of Nampula and Niassa have increasingly been drawn into the insurgency. Researchers say these “recruitment reservoirs” indicate that the conflict’s root causes can be found throughout northern Mozambique. As the group expands, its horizons are broadening: early this year the militants mainly attacked rural villages before retreating. Now they have a presence in most of the province’s 17 districts, and have taken control over key transport routes, waterways, and a strategic Indian Ocean port town. Attacks are also spilling across borders. In October, a large group of insurgents raided a village in Tanzania’s southeastern Mtwara region. In a video of the incident, an insurgent is filmed saying, “we’ve come to remove Magufuli” – the surname of Tanzania’s president. Brutal attacks suggest a plan to depopulate parts of the province, according to Israel, the researcher. “It appears that the tactic [Islamic State used in the Middle East] is the same they’re using here,” he said. “Basically to empty out, destroy everything, and whoever is left they’re going to adhere to your caliphate in the end.” Israel cited the case of Mocímboa da Praia, a port town the militants have occupied since August. “Once they took Mocímboa, they told everyone… whoever stays here is with us, the others leave it. This is an interesting tactic… they don’t want people to stay.” The reported beheadings in Muatide may have been designed to send a similar message. Local militias have been formed in the area to oppose the militants, and residents are considered more supportive of the government than in other districts where the insurgents operate. “My guess is that attacks in that area... the violence, is to push people away and to avoid those militias forming or constituting a threat,” Israel said. “The militias are people that are under-equipped, but they are fighting to defend their own.” Dangerous journeys The insurgents’ message has clearly been heard. Between late October and late November, almost 50,000 people fled their homes in Muidumbe, the district of northern Cabo Delgado where Muatide is located. Thousands fled simultaneous attacks in other districts too, bringing the total number of displaced people in the province – which has an estimated population of over two million – to 570,000, according to the government. To avoid crossing the militants, many of the recently displaced have boarded crowded sailboats on long voyages southwards to Pemba, Cabo Delgado’s capital. Shipwrecks have cost dozens of lives. The new arrivals have overwhelmed the bustling port town, once popular with tourists. It’s estimated population has swelled from 200,000 people – according to the last census in 2017 – to 330,000. Most of the displaced in Pemba are being hosted by community members – in many cases strangers they have never met before, said Raoul Bittel, head of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Pemba. “There’s a lot of solidarity,” he said. Saíde Magido, a displaced person from Muidumbe, told TNH he is living with 40 others at his sister’s house in Pemba, having fled his village in October. A bag of corn flour, some beans, and a litre of cooking oil is all he says he has been given. “I am not hearing gunshots,” he said. “But we are still suffering.” After initially denying the severity of the crisis, Mozambique’s government is now searching for land to resettle displaced people. In the meantime it has set up temporary accommodation sites and transit centres in different parts of Cabo Delgado, as well in neighbouring provinces. Bittel said conditions at the sites are “absolutely not good enough”, and that services normally found in permanent displacement camps are absent. According to a recent report on the camps by CARE International, some residents are living next to open trash pits and latrines, and in groups of up to 12 people per tent. Funding gaps and shrinking access Although some aid groups have stepped up their presence in Cabo Delgado this year, needs are outpacing funding. The World Food Programme said food rations might be cut for displaced people this month despite an estimated 710,000 people now facing severe hunger in the province. Access to thousands of people affected by the conflict has been significantly curtailed across northern parts of Cabo Delgado, where most of the violence is happening. “We don’t have access to all the areas that we would like to go to,” said Bittel. “That’s a major constraint.” Afraid that aid will be diverted to the insurgents, government officials in Cabo Delgado have told humanitarian organisations to stop providing food assistance in areas where the militants hold sway, according to local media reports. One aid official, who asked not to be named citing the sensitivity of the subject, told TNH that trucks containing food supplies from a UN agency had been prevented from entering Mocímboa da Praia earlier this year. Another aid official, who also requested anonymity, said the government has been slow processing visas to humanitarian workers. The official said the delays were “hampering” operations in the province with “many people… waiting to enter the country”. How much worse the crisis gets depends on what the insurgents do next. Analysts monitoring the conflict suspect they may be planning their first assault on the district of Mueda, which lies to the west of Muidumbe and contains a large military base. As attacks on civilians intensify, Magido, who fled to Pemba in October, said he has no plans to return home, even as the woman hosting him – and 40 others – runs out of food to feed them all. “We are not going back if this war won't end,” he said. Philip Kleinfeld reported from Bamako, Mali. © The New Humanitarian 2020

Published by BBC on December 21, 2020. A soldier takes position at daybreak in Bangui. (Andreea Campeanu/Reuters) Rwanda has deployed what it called a "protection force" to the Central African Republic after its peacekeepers there were attacked by rebels advancing to the capital, Bangui. The Rwandan and CAR governments have accused ex-President François Bozizé of backing the rebels and plotting a coup, which he has denied. UN peacekeepers have said the rebel advance has been halted. Mr Bozizé has been barred from a presidential election due on Sunday. Russia has also sent "several hundred soldiers and heavy weapons" to the country to support the government, the AFP news agency quotes a CAR government spokesman as saying. The spokesman, Ange Maxime Kazagui, said the Russian forces were invited as part of bilateral agreements, AFP reports. The Russian government has not confirmed these reports but, according to AFP, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday that Russia considered the situation in CAR "a matter of serious concern". Mr Kazagui also said Rwanda had sent several hundred men who are on the ground and have started fighting. The number of additional Rwandan soldiers deployed has not been given but the defence ministry said the operation was done "under existing bilateral agreements" with CAR. The newly deployed forces will have "different rules of engagement which will enable them to protect our forces from being attacked, and protect civilians," Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Monday. At least 750 Rwandan soldiers and police officers have been operating under the UN peace-keeping force Minusca. Minusca forces have also been deployed beyond Bangui "to block armed elements", AFP quotes a UN spokesman as saying. President Faustin Archange Touadéra has insisted Sunday's election will go ahead, saying the presence of the army and UN peacekeepers means people have nothing to fear. But opposition parties, including that of Mr Bozizé, have called for the vote to be postponed "until the re-establishment of peace and security". Rebel groups have seized several towns close to CAR's capital, clashing with government forces and looting property, and the UN said its troops were working to prevent a blockade of Bangui. Mr Bozizé's spokesman Christian Guenebem said: "We categorically deny that Bozizé is at the origin of anything." The CAR is one of Africa's poorest and most unstable countries, even though it is rich in resources like diamonds and uranium. The UN estimates that half of the population are dependent on humanitarian assistance and up to a fifth have been displaced. On 3 December CAR's Constitutional Court ruled that Mr Bozizé did not satisfy the "good morality" requirement for candidates because of an international warrant and UN sanctions against him for alleged assassinations, torture and other crimes during his rule. Who are the key players in this crisis? Mr Bozizé, a Christian, came to power after a coup in 2003 and subsequently won two elections that were widely seen as fraudulent. He was ousted in 2013 by the Séléka - a rebel coalition drawn largely from the Muslim minority - which accused him of breaking peace agreements. The country has since been caught in conflict between the Séléka and the so-called "anti-Balaka" self-defence forces, who are mainly Christian. After military intervention by France, the country's former colonial ruler, elections were held in 2016 and won by President Touadéra, who is currently seeking re-election. But fighting among militias has continued, and the UN has blamed rebel groups for the country's instability. Mr Bozizé, 74, returned to the CAR in December 2019 after living in exile for six years in Benin, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He announced in July he would stand in the 27 December election - a move that was seen as high-risk given the country's lingering civil unrest, but not unexpected. Mr Bozizé still maintains a large following, especially in the army and among the country's largest ethnic group, the Gbaya. But he faces UN sanctions for his alleged support of the "anti-Balaka" groups in 2013. CAR authorities have also issued an arrest warrant against him for "crimes against humanity and incitement of genocide". What is the threat now? On Saturday, the three main rebel groups announced they had formed an alliance called the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), and accused President Touadéra of trying to rig the upcoming election. In a statement, the CPC invited "all other groups to join" and called on members to "scrupulously respect the integrity of the civilian population". As election campaigning heats up, Facebook said last week it had identified rival disinformation campaigns to influence the vote - masterminded by individuals with links to the French military and prominent Russian businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Moscow has fostered close ties in recent years with the CAR. Russian military advisers are currently stationed in the country to help train government forces. Reports by UN investigators, the US military and journalists have also documented activity in the country by the Wagner Group, a private military firm allegedly owned by Mr Prigozhin. © 2020 BBC.

Two Years On, No Accountability for 535 Killed Published by HRW on December 16, 2020. Voting in the presidential election was postponed in Yumbi and two areas of North Kivu province. (AFP) In late December 2018, Father Nestor Longota, a Catholic priest, returned to Bongende, his home village in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo. “What I saw was unimaginable,” he said last week. “There were putrefied bodies, some were mutilated, others had been burned in houses, and houses were destroyed.” A few days earlier, on December 16, hundreds of ethnic Batende – armed with hunting rifles, automatic weapons, knives, and machetes – stormed the nearby town of Yumbi and killed at least 170 people, mostly ethnic Banunu. The day after, they attacked the villages of Nkolo II and then Bongende. A total of 535 people were killed, and 111 others injured. Father Longota lost at least 30 members of his extended family. He is still awaiting justice. The secret burial of a Banunu customary chief on a private land claimed by the Batende ostensibly triggered the massacres, but government and United Nations reports indicated the attacks were planned and organized by local leaders. The attackers damaged, destroyed, and looted more than 1,500 houses, as well as health centers, schools, and polling places. About a third of the 16,000 people who fled to neighboring Republic of Congo have since returned to their villages. They have complained they have received very little assistance to rebuild their lives. Two years after the massacres, investigations are ongoing. A judicial source told Human Rights Watch that the exhumation of graves is supposed to take place before any trial. In the meantime, credible information suggests at least three suspected assailants, who were among the dozens arrested and held in Kinshasa, the capital, have been released for reasons that remain unclear. The trauma left by the Yumbi massacres is still palpable for its survivors and the families of the victims. It has upturned their lives and made them fearful of the future. The Congolese authorities, who have failed to provide psychological support, should now ensure those who orchestrated and carried out the massacres are fairly prosecuted. “I feel that our government has abandoned us to our fate,” Father Longota said as the two-year anniversary approached. “A new massacre could take place if there is no justice.” © 2020 Human Rights Watch